Total War: Shogun 2

Shogun 2 Receives Massive Update

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Earlier this week an enormous patch was applied to the lately installment of the Total War series, Shogun 2. The bulk of the update seems to be fixes, but there's some unit tweaking, DirectX 11 support, and even four new multiplayer maps included as well. We found the game to be a great co-op strategy/RTS game, giving it an impressive 4.5 out of 5. For the full list of patch notes, read on:

ADDITIONS
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DirectX 11 support, including

Advanced Shadows

Support for MSAA 2x,4x,8x.

Enhanced Depth of Field

Tessellation Support

Anti-aliasing support

Note: Enabling Anisotropic Texture Filtering on DirectX9 is not working in this update. This will be fixed in the next patch.

General Fixes (includes single player and multiplayer fixes)

Fixed firing-arc overlay for blinding grenades to show minimum range

Slight changes to the intercept for igniting buildings

Fix for battlefield dominance being awarded to both players

Fixed triggers for the Elusive Strikeforce and Inspiring Counterattack achievements

Legendary force achievable in single player

Fix for stacking effects

Ninja hiding tweaks

Change to how victory types are assigned so that Heroic victories are a bit rarer (they're the most common now) and decisive / close are more common. Pyrrhic can be more common than before

Fixed entities floating outside castle wall when they get knocked down or knocked flying while climbing off the top of walls

Fixed bug with looping transition animation due to move orders with invalid path locations being spammed by the squad repeatedly

Capture buildings cache if the building was captured from held before telling the Aide de camp

Improved torch caching

Fix for crash in battlefield zone cursor intersection

Adjustment to AI to make it more difficult for the AI to use cavalry against spearmen

Fix for drop-in ambushes not starting if the player under ambush presses 'Start Battle' first

Ship banners are now appearing correctly in replays

Fix for men staying at the bottom of the walls when they are attacked whilst climbing

In naval replays, some ships’ flags were appearing in the wrong colours, now fixed

Order to burn down a building now finishes if the building is destroyed by other means

Fix to rare crash when placing mines in naval battles

Experience system revision: experience-level thresholds rebalanced to allow for faster overall level-progression. Per-unit-type threshold multiplier introduced that scales the thresholds to compensate for differences in the damage output of different unit types. AI experience levels now fully derived from combat (the AI experience boosting mechanism has been removed).

Updated pre-battle speeches to take greater advantage of available situational information

Grass and scrub no longer gets in the way of the camera during pre-battle speeches

Armies sharing the same deployment zone are no longer deployed on top of each other by default

Improved first-person camera and projectile camera: time dilation effect is now relative to projectile speed. Artillery engine crew now trigger the projectile camera when their engine fires. Projectile camera remains stationary at the projectile's terminus to allow the player to see the results

Pre-battle speeches now distinguish between multiple causes of the gates being forced open at the start of the battle

Adjustments to morale calculations, dependent on who is in control of an army and in what context. Allows for fine-tuning of morale calculations separately for single-player humans, multiplayer humans and AI armies

Improved the calculation of unit combat status. This corrects errors in the reporting of a unit's tooltip win/loss state, and also fixes some issues in the unit morale calculations that use this status information

New weather gameplay effects added: Fog now causes a range penalty to all missile units, and causes non-commanding units to be hidden at a distance of 600m or more, even if they are out of cover

Fixed issue where the Total War camera sometimes snaps downwards when switching the camera type and/or starting a transition. (This was particularly evident at the end of the pre-battle cinematic)

Fixed issue in reinforcements system that allows multiple armies to feed more units into one army than is allowed on the battlefield

Fixed crash-bug caused by placing Yari Ashigaru into pike wall formation, then incrementing/decrementing their formation width and moving the unit before ending the deployment phase

Fixed issue that allowed siege defenders in ‘fight to the death’ mode to continue fighting in the end phase of battle after their fort was successfully captured by the attacking force

Pre-battle speeches are now disabled in custom battles if the player does not field a General

Fixed crash bug where the Stand and Fight special ability was used in a custom battle on a general unit that had been removed and re-added to the battle setup

Fixed crash bug resulting from construction of an RTS camera with specified position

Fixed crash bug that could sometimes occur when the FPS camera's context-entity died

Cinematic camera movement speed is no longer height-relative. This allows for greater control and adjustment of camera positions in the cinematic editor

Fixed flaw in unit logic that could cause a crash in the multiplayer lobby when interacting with a veteran unit that has zero men.

Pre-battle speeches now allow for minor clans to be playable.

Naval combat

Fixed intercepting with surrendered ships

Fixed ships getting stuck on the edge of the battlefield

Fixed sail-configuration not fully working when using speed-up

Fixed enemy naval mines being visible in deployment

Hull-damage indicators now consistent across campaign and naval battles

Audio

Audio rebalancing

Added projectile injury sounds

Added special ability UI sounds

Added new unit melee sounds (male/female units, swords/spears, mixed)

UI sound when unit ordered to climb wall

Naval mines trigger launch sound

Front-end seasonal sounds to match scene

Fixed problem with music not playing on custom battle screen

Music volume now defaults to 75%

Fixed rare issue with sounds not triggering after extended gameplay

Separate sounds for female units

Added reverb for distance sounds

Fix for host being able to hear UI sounds for units that have been gifted to another player

In Diplomacy, probability of acceptance is now reported as high for gifts

Fixed crash in family-system after adopting uncle back into family

Workaround for bad path-finding data in starting position

Fixed rare lockup where army disembarks from navy into zone-of-control in player settlement, the navy is too close to a third party neutral navy, and the player declines to attack the disembarking army

Fixed rare load-crash when loading a pre-battle save game during an AI turn when that AI had previously issued a multi-turn order that involved an army disembarking from the navy in a future turn

Agents will no longer play multi-turn action animations if the player cannot afford the action

Autoresolve battle visual fix: army cannot drop to zero soldiers before the last round

Night battle support for pending battle power-bar. Will update if night battle is selected (and if the UI queries the value again)

Autoresolver will destroy or capture ships that are too weak to be used in battle

Repairing a ship in a port no longer invalidates its hull panel information.

Fixed a glow under the shroud when a castle is under siege

Kyoto has an additional defence bonus in the autoresolver

Improved defensive behaviour of single-region clans when building up forces to attack

Increased multiplayer costs of Cannon bune and Nihon Maru to 4000 and 5000

Morale for Warrior Monks reduced by 2

Naginata Warrior Monks melee attack reduced by 3

Bow Cavalry cost reduced to 650

Katana Cavalry cost reduced to 800

Yari Cavalry cost increased to 850

Fire Projecting Mangonels cost increased to 1500

Fire Rockets cost increased to 1800

European Cannons cost increased to 1500

Gameplay

14k is now the maximum fund bracket for matchmade battles

Reduced siege unit accuracy

Inspire ability bonus to morale reduced to 10 from 12

Inspire ability bonus to accuracy reduced to 15 from 40

Inspire ability bonus to reload reduced from 50 to 20

Inspire ability bonus to melee attack reduced from 7 to 3

Whistling Arrow penalties to units reduced

All siege maps: Defender has 60% of funds instead of 50%

General

Removed passive encourage friendly morale bonus from generals units

Increased flanking morale penalties

Changed casualty morale penalties to be smaller at low casualty levels and higher at large casualty levels

Increased detonation radius on fire rockets

Rapid volley reload rate bonus reduced from 70 to 30

Bugs

Alt-F4 problem fixed. When any player disconnects from a matchmade battle, they will accrue a loss regardless of whether they are the host, or not. The player disconnecting will also suffer a 5% penalty on their ELO rating. The player not disconnecting will receive a win. It is, however, possible that wins accrued in this way will not update correctly on the leaderboard and avatar stats. All other gains from the win do work (eg unlocking of units, clan points, ELO skill rating etc)

Enemy avatar customisations are now viewable in battle

Bug where team matchmade battles always use small funds has been fixed

Veteran unit speed upgrades are now working

The ‘Hold firm’ clan speciality has been fixed

The ‘Scares enemies’ clan speciality has been fixed

Bug where matchmade battles sometimes result in incorrect battle type has been fixed